UntraceableReview

Share.

A laundry list of psychological thriller clichés.

By Todd Gilchrist

As a critic one's faculties for certain genres - and more specifically, subgenres - begin to wane after years of watching lackluster entries with few if any new ideas and the same uninspired execution. My personal least-favorite of these cinematic canons is vampire films, which haven't come up with a new or interesting idea since the first time someone associated the phenomenon with AIDS or maybe just some kind of virus. But psychological thrillers hold a special place in the black hole of my genre fatigue because, quite frankly, they petered out in just four years but have somehow persevered for almost fifteen more. The very fact that Seven director David Fincher made Zodiac as a rebuttal to the empty style and superficial scares of these films - which, to be fair, he at least in part pioneered - is a testament to the need for a moratorium to be placed on psychological thrillers tout de suite.

All of which makes Untraceable that much more insufferable. Directed by Gregory Hoblit, the film is a veritable laundry list of psychological thriller clichés, few of which are saved by the competent if unenthusiastic performances of Diane Lane, Billy Burke and Colin Hanks in lead roles.

Lane plays Jennifer Marsh, a special agent for the FBI who investigates internet criminals. Along with her partner, Griffin Dowd (Hanks), she generally spends her days shutting down music pirates and pedophiles, but she discovers a new and infinitely more deadly adversary when she comes across KillWithMe.com, a web site that boasts live, on-air murders that accelerate with each click of a visitor's mouse. Collaborating with a local detective named Eric Box (Burke), Marsh soon becomes consumed with catching this impossibly clever internet predator, in the process finding herself caught up in the killer's deadly game.

During a recent visit to the film's edit bay, Director Hoblit emphasized the accuracy with which he and his cast and crew depicted the FBI's pursuit of online criminals. But the bigger question is, who cares? There are still so many unbelievable elements in this film that the authenticity with which the legal process is carried out scarcely matters. The killer, whose identity I will not reveal, is not only an expert at computer programming, but indefatigably resourceful, whether he/she is kidnapping and torturing people larger than him/herself, building (and more importantly buying) facilities for his/her next victim, or just bending time and space to suit his/her fiendish designs.

Admittedly, my personal level of technological sophistication is fairly low - beyond checking my email and searching for pornography, I am pretty useless in front of a computer - but this film suggests things about the nature of the internet, not to mention consumer-grade electronics, that I am pretty certain are inaccurate. In multiple cases, the film suggests that a web site with no consistent content and no promotion that has existed for only a few weeks can rack up tens of millions of viewers in a matter of seconds; while I am aware of the existence of email notifications and other such services to alert readers of new content, the technology required to make this a reality would literally have to predict the appearance of the content before it happened. I am reminded of Roger Ebert's insightful review of the 2002 film Rollerball which voiced a similar criticism, and which speaks to the comparative ignorance (some six years later) with which the film approaches its chronicle of viral marketing and internet content.

That said, Lane, Hanks and company do an excellent job making all of the technical jargon sound legitimate, and generally acquit themselves of the film's otherwise ridiculous developments. In particular, Lane is a grounding force in the film, lending credibility to her job and her character's determination, but overall the material is just too hackneyed for even her formidable talents to overcome. The old tropes are out in such unashamed effect that by the time the killer explains his/her motives, we no longer care, because according to the film FBI agents don't so much detect as wait until the killer or predator reveals him/herself and then burst in to apprehend and take credit for their inevitable stupidity.

Overall there are far more offensive films in release right now, but cliché for exhausted cliché, Untraceable is the least necessary of them. Paramount Home Entertainment recently released a director's cut of Zodiac on DVD, and I'd recommend that you rent that and stay in rather than venture out to watch this tired return to the same conventions that have scarcely been updated since they were established almost two decades ago. Otherwise, despite its status as a psychological thriller, Untraceable might inspire you to search out a vampire film afterward, because they suck too, but at least there it's intentional.

Overall there are far more offensive films in release right now, but cliché for exhausted cliché, Untraceable is the least necessary of them. Paramount Home Entertainment recently released a director's cut of Zodiac on DVD, and I'd recommend that you rent that and stay in rather than venture out to watch this tired return to the same conventions that have scarcely been updated since they were established almost two decades ago. Otherwise, despite its entrenchment in an exhausted subgenre, after seeing Untraceable you might be inspired to seek out a vampire movie to follow up rather than a psychological thriller - because if you dig this, they suck too, but at least there it's mostly intentional.